In the tiny fishing port, situated at the south end of Biarritz’s beach area, Sophie spotted a free table in one of the small restaurants. It overlooked a collection of apparently little used, but picturesque upturned fishermen’s boats. Without consulting the menu Sophie order grilled sardines for them both and a bottle of chilled white wine.
The weather was fine though there were few people on the beach apart from the surfers waiting for the next wave in their wet suits, bobbing in the water like black seals. The holiday season would soon be over and the majority of the midday strollers were retired people who mingled with surfer bums busy loading or unloading their boards and gear from beat-up vans, their eyes always fixed on the sea.
Barton was pleased to be with Sophie, she had promised to show him the sights of what she called the last refuge for the French middle class — far from the jungle of Paris and the too cosmopolitan Riviera. He was also glad to breathe the cool clean air of the Basque country, a refreshing change from the heat and humidity of the Caribbean.
Barton had finally made it, after much hesitation he was back in Europe, in Biarritz a town he knew little of, fresh, sparkling clean situated in a beautiful region at the foot of the Pyrenees and overlooking the Atlantic rollers so much favoured by surfers.
It was in Biarritz in 1890, William K. Vanderbilt and two friends discovered golf watching an exhibition match, it was a game unknown to them and Vanderbilt was said to have declared: ‘Gentlemen, this beats rifle shooting for distance and accuracy. It is a game that I think would go in our country.’ Golf was on the world map and more than a century later Biarritz could boast some of the finest clubs in the world amongst them Biarritz-le-Phare, Chiberta, and Chantaco in the nearby town of Saint Jean de Luz.
Between 1860 and 1910 railway stations, hotels and apartments had sprung up along the French coast and Biarritz, once a modest fishing village, became the playground of royalty after the Empress Eugènie, who built a splendid villa there, introduced the town to Napoléon III. Among its celebrated visitors were Queen Victoria and Edward VII, followed in the 1930s by the Prince of Wales, who was to become the Duke of Windsor after marrying Wallis Simpson, making Biarritz a fashionable resort for the rich before WWII.
Times had changed, but Biarritz remained, for those in the know, one of Europe’s smartest resorts far from the throngs of foreign tourists that regularly invaded the Riviera. Biarritz offered its grand hotels, fine restaurants, fashionable shops, a pleasant climate with little fear of the kind of urban violence that now stalked the Rivera.
Sophie was unable to persuade Tom Barton that things were not as bad as they looked in London; she would have preferred him to be nearer to her. But Barton was unconvinced, feeling more at home in Dominica than anywhere else since he had quit the City; it seemed like a safe haven with as he suspected the worse of the crisis yet to come.
‘The City has become a casino, it’s no longer a place to finance and invest in industry and commerce, not even for banking services or selling mortgages,’ he complained. ‘It’s the biggest betting shop ever invented, if you’ve got the money you can bet on almost anything and everything.’
‘Do you really think so,’ asked Sophie half listening, she had heard the story before.
‘Of course, it’s no different from the local bookie, you put money on a horse or something in the hope of winning, in the City, instead of horses or football results, punters bet on shares and commodities.’
‘If you say so Tom.’
‘Then can even hedge their bets.’
‘Doesn’t that seem a bit like defeating the object?’
‘Not really, it’s what I do. The gains are small, it’s a bit like betting on pairs and impairs in roulette, a lot of small gains add up, especially if you put a lot of money on the table.’
‘Don’t forget for every winner there’s a loser,’ said Sophie smiling at Barton’s reflections. ‘So what are we going to do this afternoon,’ she said reaching out for his hand.
‘Let’s go to Spain.’
‘Spain, why not. What about San Sebastian, it’s less than an hour’s drive, if the traffic’s not too heavy.’
‘You think that’s a good idea,’ he said nodding towards the dark clouds that had appeared on the horizon to the south.
That evening they joined a party of Sophie’s friends for diner in a farmhouse that dated from 1505 in the small village of Sare. Olhabidea was in reality a high class maison d’hôte that took reservations only. It was warm and comfortable with a welcoming atmosphere Altogether they were nine, seated at an elegantly dressed round table, in a dining room surrounded by book cases filled with works on pelote basque, agriculture and gardening. Outside a gale was howling, the weather had brusquely changed as it often did on the Atlantic coast.
For the benefit of Barton the conversation turned to the Basque Country and how Biarritz had first appeared on the world scene as a fashionable coastal resort in the middle of the nineteenth century. But before that, long before, it had been part of English Gascony, when Eleanor of Aquitaine married Prince Henry Plantagenet, who then became King of England and a large part of what is now France.
The home of the Basques lay in the southern part of Aquitaine and in northern Spain. Tradition liked to recall Basques as whalers, however, Sophie told Barton the last whale caught off the coast of Biarritz was back in 1686. Like many other peoples Basque history was built around legends and distant history, eclipsing the less glorious and certainly more mundane reality.
Biarritz had to wait until 1854, when the Emperatrice Eugènie returned to the town after her marriage to Napoleon III, before becoming known to the world. Her first visit to Biarritz had been in 1838, with her mother, the Countess of Montijo, who in search of a home away from war torn Spain, arrived there with her two daughters, María Francisca and María Eugenia.
They then moved on to Paris, where the girls were educated and brought up in fashionable society and where Eugènie met Prince Louis Napoléon. Napoleon built a summer residence in Biarritz for Eugènie, and they became regular summer visitors until 1868, instantly transforming the resort into a fashionable venue for Europe’s royals. Amongst its famous visors were the kings of Würtenberg, Belgium and Portugal, and Russian as well as Polish and Romanian princes, Spanish grandees and English lords and many others.
A Journalist